Precast car park construction - environmental and sustainability issues

GT flooring unit reduces weight, concrete requirement and labour

The GT flooring unit is a reinforced 400mm-deep prestressed concrete unit that can be cast up to 2.4m wide and over 16m in length, incorporating solid lightweight void formers to significantly reduce overall weight.

The unit has been designed to take standard car park loadings and, where required, waterproof finishes without the need for any additional structural concrete toppings. This minimises the finished floor thickness, further reducing weight and eliminating a significant on-site operation. A range of surface finishes can be applied to the top surface of unit during manufacture.

Significant height reduction

The overall height of a structure can be considerably reduced, which can lead to significant cost and material savings on external architectural cladding requirements. Where planning heights are limited, the reduction in floor-to-floor heights can enable increased car park capacities to be achieved. The GT Flooring Unit has been designed to be used with a full precast concrete frame solution or with precast columns and 400mm-deep in-situ post-tensioned beams at each end, thus providing a fully flat soffit solution.

Shear connections are incorporated longitudinally along the edges of adjoining units to prevent differential camber. The joint width between the units has been minimised and is grouted to prevent any water penetration between car park decks.